The Baha’i Faith—Part Seven

By Dr. John Ankerberg and Dr. John Weldon

THEOLOGY—Part 3

God
The Baha’i faith teaches an absolute monotheism, stressing the unity of God. In particu-
lar ways, however, God’s nature is unspecified and, as a result, described in very general
terms and is an unknowable essence. For the Baha’i, “God is greater than all words,” and,
conveniently, doctrinal approaches to God are sternly rejected.1 This is one reason Baha’is
disdain systematic theology.
There are, of course, “benefits” to a hidden deity. If the one true God is unknowable and
undefined (except in general terms necessary to any rational concept of Deity—eternal,
infinite, righteous, omnipotent and so on), then other religions’ concepts of the Deity have
little to contrast it with. While other religions may know their God as “B,” they cannot imme-
diately deny the Baha’i God as “non-B” if the Baha’i God is spoken of only in general terms
acceptable to most faiths.2 However, reflecting Islam, Baha’u’llah did describe God as
“Supreme Singleness,” an apparent reference denying the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. 3
In Baha’i, God does not incarnate Himself. Also, God is incapable of being known
personally; at best, only the Manifestations reveal something of God’s nature. God then, is
an unknowable essence who is believed to manifest (to a degree) through the prophets.
Even the Manifestations, of course, can be “known” only through historical records (not
personally).
As we consider the Baha’i theology we discover the Baha’i relationship to God is quite
unlike the kind of relationship the Christian has with God and Christ, where there is on-
going direct personal knowledge and intimacy (John 17:3). Christians talk to God through
Christ daily in the manner of normal conversation, and through the presence of His Holy
Spirit and by His Word, He replies. Christians do not talk to the prophets—for example,
Moses and Abraham. Thus, without such personal communication, it seems doubtful that
the Baha’i would talk to or pray to their God (or His prophets) in the same way (if at all) that
a Christian would to Jesus. They could praise their God, as Baha’u’llah did, and seem to
talk to him, but the conversation would be one-sided, apart from mystical experiences that
might be interpreted as a “reply.” Communication with or response from an impersonal and
unknowable Deity would, it seems, be rather like interaction with a new type of unknown
energy, such as some magnetic force. How would one evaluate a response or even know it
was one? “Personality is in the Manifestation of the Divinity, not in the essence of the
Divinity.”4
Thus, if God cannot be known personally in the Christian sense, it is hard to conceive of
having a personal relationship to Him, or even with the Manifestations, which allegedly
reveal Him, for they are, after all, dead and gone. All that is left are historical records, a
“relationship” with the God described therein (the difference between, say, reading about
Jesus and knowing Him), and perhaps, again, mystical experiences.
Clearly, historic knowledge of the Baha’i prophets is not the same as being known by

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God (Galatians 4:9); as being loved by him (John 14:21, 23; 16:27); as being adopted into
his family (Galatians 4:5-9; Ephesians 1:5); and as being united to Him intimately (1
Corinthians 12:27). After all, does the Baha’i God work within the Baha’i convert personally
and come to dwell within him and sanctify him in the way the triune God of the Scriptures
does (1 Corinthians 6:19; Philippians 2:13)?
Thus, an immense gulf exists between the relationship of the believer to his God in
Baha’i and to that relationship found in Christianity. The Christian God is vastly more re-
lated to His people than the Baha’i God is: the image of God in man, the incarnation, the
atonement and all aspects of Christian salvation (such as union with Christ) are intensely
personal and underlie the deep bond that exists between the Christian God and the re-
deemed believer.
Not surprisingly, the Baha’i God is, in many respects, similar to the Allah of the Koran—
majestic, utterly separate from people, unreachable, “the Compassionate, the All Merciful”
and so on. (In his The Kitab-I-Iqan Baha’u’llah quotes the Koran about 145 times, the Bible
only ten.) Baha’u’llah described God as follows:
God, the unknowable Essence, the divine Being, is immensely exalted beyond every
human attribute, such as corporeal existence, ascent and descent, egress and regress....
He is and hath ever been veiled in ancient eternity of His Essence, and will remain in His
Reality everlastingly hidden from the sight of men.... No tie of direct intercourse can possibly
bind Him to His creatures. He standeth exalted beyond and above all separation and union,
all proximity and remoteness.5
Such a statement, for one, reveals the Baha’i (and Islamic) antipathy towards the Chris-
tian concept of the incarnation (Philippians 2:1-10). In such theology, the very idea that
God would “degrade” Himself so as to become one of His creatures (let alone die in their
stead) is unthinkable; indeed it is demeaning and blasphemous to the grandeur and tran-
scendent majesty of God.
Again, as one reads Baha’i descriptions, it becomes clear that people can never really
know this God personally. So one wonders how one really trusts a God one does not know,
and never can know? References to His “closeness” are rare and, although present,6 seem
to be irrelevant in a personal sense. The “attaining unto the Presence” of God is only pos-
sible in “the Day of Resurrection” and refers to attaining God’s “Beauty” through the
prophet.7 God Himself is still not known directly or personally: “From time immemorial He
hath been veiled in the ineffable sanctity of His exalted Self, and will everlastingly continue
to be wrapt in the impenetrable mystery of His Unknowable Essence.”8 “No one hath any
access to the Invisible Essence. The way is barred and the road impassable.” 9 The contrast
to Christianity is marked. Jesus taught, “Now this is eternal life: that they may know you,
the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (John 17:5).
An article in World Order, “The God of Baha’u’llah,” also discusses the unknowableness
of God. The author discusses with accuracy and some satisfaction the contrast between
the Christian and Baha’i viewpoints: “The God of the Baha’is seems more distant, more
unapproachable than the Father evoked in the Gospels. It is no longer a question of man
‘made in the image of God.’ The Godhead is an alien and inconceivable Being nearer to
the God of Spinoza than to the God of Genesis.”10 The Baha’i author goes on to point out
that in spite of our inability to know this alien God, we can nevertheless, “open ourselves”
to Him. Thus, “God remains in His heights, but His Spirit, the Holy Spirit (which is in no way
here the “third person” of an impossible “trinity” but, more logically, the spirit of God and of

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the love given by God), throws a bridge across the chasm and annuls the separation.”11
Presumably God is able to remain alien while we simultaneously come to experience
Him in some sense through the prophets or “the Holy Spirit.” This may be accomplished
“mystically.” But this is not an intimate knowledge involving personal fellowship, commun-
ion and union with God as in Christianity. In essence, the divine love of the Baha’i God is
one of limited self-disclosure and perhaps of mystical experience but worlds apart from the
love of God seen at the Cross (John 5:16), which is personal redemption.
At best Baha’i knowledge of God is intellectual at one level and mystical at another.
Thus, as ‘Abdu’l-Baha stated, knowing about the Manifestations is knowing about God. “If
man attains to the knowledge of the Manifestations of God, he will attain to the knowledge
of God.”12 Baha’is also stress the importance of mystical knowledge of God. In his essay
“The Knowledge of God: An Essay on Baha’i Epistemology,” Jack McLean refers to the
mystical approach to “knowing”. He refers to “Baha’u’llah’s notion of purifying the
consciousness from all previous presuppositions of knowledge in order to gain true knowl-
edge,” and he states that “Baha’u’llah is clearly saying that one must empty himself of
worldly knowledge in order to discover the knowledge of God”13 (cf. Romans 1:18-21).
Baha’u’llah declared that the seeker after knowledge of God, “Must before all else, cleanse
and purify his heart, which is the seat of the revelation of the inner mysteries of God, from
the obscuring dust of all acquired knowledge, and the allusions of the embodiments of
satanic fancy. He must purge his breast... from all shadowy and ephemeral attachments.”14
Divine mystical knowledge of God is to be sought in place of worldly, normal knowledge:
“The most grievous of all veils is the veil of knowledge. Upon its ashes, we have reared the
tabernacle of divine knowledge.”15 Hence it is not surprising that “the Bab, therefore, for-
bade the reading of all non-Babi books, and commanded that they be burned.... Believers
must read only the Bayan, and books written by eminent Babi scholars under the shadow
of the Bayan. No one is permitted to own more than nineteen books, the first of which is to
be the Bayan.”16 This sentiment, obviously, was quite contrary to the “free inquiry” and
“scientific approach” of modern Baha’i leaders.

The Trinity
The Baha’i religion declares that the Trinity is an irrational concept. Given his presuppo-
sitions, Baha’u’llah could hardly compromise here. There could be no Incarnation, in spite
of Jesus’ claims (six times in John 6:33-58 alone) and other biblical declarations
(Philippians 2:1-9). God could never “descend” into the world; at best his “Manifestations”
could only dimly reveal Him. The following statement by ‘Abdu’l-Baha rejects both the
Trinity and the Incarnation: “The Divine Reality… admits of no division; for division and
multiplicity are properties of creatures.... The Divine Reality is sanctified from singleness,17
then how much more from plurality. The descent [of God] into conditions and degrees [the
material world] would be equivalent to imperfection and contrary to perfection, and is,
therefore, absolutely impossible.... For God to descend into the conditions of existence
would be the greatest of imperfections.”18

Notes:
1
World Order, Fall 1978, p. 11.
2
Baha’u’llah, The Kitab-I-Iqan: The Book of Certitude (Wilmette, IL” Baha’i Publishing Trust, 1974),
pp. 177, 179, 190; ‘Abdu’l-Baha, Baha’i World Faith (Wilmette, IL: Baha’i Publishing Trust, 1976),

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 p. 30; Shoghi Effendi, Gleanings from the Writings of Baha’u’llah (Wilmette, IL: Baha’i Publishing
Trust, 1976), p. 62.
3
Ibid.
4
William McLwee Miller, The Baha’i Faith: Its History and Teachings (South Pasadena, CAL William
Carey Library, 1974), p. 226, citing Baha’u’llah, ed. H. Holley, The Baha’i Scriptures (New York:
Brentane’s, 1923), p. 481.
5
The Kitab-I-Iqan, p. 98.
6
Gleanings from the Writings of Baha’u’llah, p. 186.
7
The Kitab-I-Iqan, pp. 140-145; 169-170.
8
Gleanings from the Writings of Baha’u’llah, p. 65.
9
Miller, The Baha’i Faith, p. 226, citing Baha’i Scriptures (1923), 459.
10
World Order, Fall 1978, p. 12.
11
Ibid., p. 13.
12
Baha’i World Faith, p. 323.
13
World Order, Spring 1978, pp. 48-49.
14
The Kitab-I-Iqan, pp. 192-193.
15
Ibid., p. 188.
16
Miller, The Baha’i Faith, p. 64. Followers of Bab were Babis. Baha’u’llah rescinded this command.
17
[Apparently due to God’s ineffable nature, though they speak of “God” in such terminology.]
18
World Order, Winter 1966, p. 27.

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